Cultural agency and self-management in Latin American accessible and inclusive film festivals

This research study discusses different cultural alternatives that challenge the forms of exclusion faced by people with disabilities, which segregate their full insertion into society and lead to their marginal participation in cultural spaces. This is due, in part, to a welfare and medical perspective that does not separate people with disabilities from their diagnosis. In this regard, we explore the cultural practices of diverse groups of people with disabilities, who organize accessible and inclusive film festivals as a way to exercise their cultural rights. We seek to make inclusive cultural proposals visible and to analyze their tools and strategies, as well as their implementation in the process of introducing accessibility in cinema. Through semi-structured interviews with managers from film festivals in six Latin American countries, we explore their contribution to the expansion of the development of public cultural policies for the benefit of people with disabilities. Likewise, we observe the ways in which these festivals represent important spaces for meeting, collaboration, and training under the rationale of inclusion. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of the various models of accessible film festivals as spaces of agency, which influence the construction of current public policies focused on people with disabilities.